Personal Demo Feedback

[dense plank]

This thread is mostly meant for personal commentary towards the team - with that being said there is no high necessity for any of the detailing I may be making but rather my personal feedback as food for thought.

Before I jump into my direct subjective critiques I want to start by celebrating the team and this game. This is an awesome concept with high attention to detail. To me this game has a high flavor for rich story telling through visual and audio design. The combat system is a interesting take on the current popular hot swap identity in fast paced combat focusing on applying the correct status ailments on enemies to create team synergies for bigger burst damage pay offs. The character designs are just flat out cool. The graphic design for the UI, player HUD, and elements in the game are phenomenal. Also who ever had the idea to have the mount also have a secondary form as a smaller companion pet that floats around the player model has my sincere praise because it means my mount now serves two purposes in one( a mount and a pet companion). This game did a fantastic job at nailing down a solid stylized look and feel of a fantasy rpg, although its original concept was more akin to “a Genshin like” I feel like this stands out for its own choice in execution. I will play this game regardless of additional changes in its current state and appreciate the craft that went into this game! As a comment of gratitude from me to you I think this is a beautiful work of art.

With that being said I will be attaching my personal thoughts / feedback on a thread for this post

**Sound: **

• In the town and when exploring there are nature sounds that appear like birds or crickets and to be honest they are tuned up pretty strong and can kind of pull from the level of immersion, the wild life always sounds like it is right on top of me and feels like it is missing some spatial polish
• The main town theme reminds me of wizard 101 starting town (wizard city)
• When we first encounter Ornette we are hit with the chapel theme and I feel like in these cutscene cinematics having these sounds at the forefront the whole time can feel a little distracting and we could dial it down like maybe when the player first enters the chapel it starts at usual full audible level then it fades out to be a little quieter but have the choir vocals feel like they sit on top and come through a little more through a technique like sidechain compression (often called "ducking") or transient shaping, then with the critical moment we could swell the music up before the end of the cinematic for the player to set off on the quest - I am not gonna act like I know a bunch about sound design, mixing or composition but I do find that this pattern appears more in the final fantasy games.

Combat:

• Ok I know you have heard this about a trillion times but thoughts on this game vs Dragon Nest - I didnt play Dragon Nest a whole lot so I am not too positive on what the community would be really anticipating / missing from this game but from the little of Dragon Nest I did play the thing I did enjoy was the feeling of skill chaining. The skills in Dragon Nest gave the player more variety in combat choices. This is something I feel like is a key stand out as something I feel like Dragon Sword Awakening is missing. The Combat system design currently is based around status aliments. This on its own is not a bad choice, however it means that as players our combat choices is now driven by this so team orientation is now motivated by what hero can benefit from another's ability to apply the corresponding status aliment to match signal skill conditions. For example if I want the full burst potential of skills I need the proper set up of status application followed by a swap for a pay off that also can trigger a status application that the other heroes in team have as corresponding conditions. I need to ensure that the skills in rotation cross synergize between characters applicable statuses.

• I love the design of Theresia (who ever drew up those proportions + character concept - to you my good sir a chiefs kiss) however her skills are dependent on stun and bleed, in the demo Roxy is the main hero who pairs well in terms of aliments that she can apply and react to, but this means as a player I am starting to become limited in comp choices for max combat options / gameplay fun. Like if I want to be swapping between characters cashing in on those signal skill prompt payoffs for status application I need to match like with like. Something that could expand this is allowing certain ailments to count as others or allow players to upgrade or modify them to be considered as others - for example if I upgrade the skill [Divine Arc] on Theresia it now has Activation condition of stun or shock - this means I can now have Ornette in the line up and get a pay off by chaining with [Hoy Grab].
• Limited skill pool for 2 that you can activate from hot bar and additional 2 behind status aliment conditions - I think having the 4 skill options as is isn't bad though I feel like the goldilocks zone is 4 on the hot bar with some options available through unlock, skill enhancement, or skill tree + the skills from conditions would open up more options for the player. When playing the team comp [Theresia],[Rocy], and [Castella] - this feels ike how the game was meant to be played

• This is just a thought but in most other games with Hero summons there usually is a ult that has a cinematic with big burst and sometimes a change in the characters combat mechanics. This to me serves some very key gameplay functions - big payoff (the ace up the sleeve), absolute aura/ aura farming, and moment to moment goals to aim for in combat. Ults feel like rewards for continued combat allowing you to have control of tempo or pacing that can be used for more burst damage or get back on your feat recouped from failed combat sequencing. In Dragon Sword Awakening the closest we get to this is usually the [Signal B] skill on a hero that triggers when you swap them in with correct affliction conditions met, but I would love seeing something dedicated ult with its own cinematic.
• Some one already mentioned Target locking and to that I second that recommendation. Small caveat - the when the ailment skills trigger ( [Signal A] and [Signal B] skills) they lock on and target the enemy with the affiliation that met the condition which could pull you away from enemy you are trying to focus down - not sure how this interaction would be handled with target locking? Like I would hate to be looking at the enemy I want to focus while my signal skill swaps me to hitting another enemy off screen even though my camera is locked on a separate enemy.

• The characters often trigger an attack for just switching to them which is a nice quality to keep the flow of combat moving but I feel that as a player I don't really find myself swapping unless I see there is a payoff for it or if all my skills for current character are on long cool downs and I want to pick up the pace / tempo. So I often find myself swapping only to use a skill that is not on cooldown hoping to get a new affliction applied to get the combat momentum going again. I think my prior thoughts would address this but it does feel like I often loose combat momentum when I run out of skills to apply ailments for signal skill conditions. this can feel like combat choices / actions become limited to just basic attacks while waiting for skill cooldown on certain comps, but this is just because certain characters have specific payoff requirements that don't work with just any team comp (ideal for gatcha game where you intend to keep updating the character line up to be able to give enough options for team compositions).

Potential world immersion improvements:
there are often static assets that make the game feel more like a MMO like the beetle drawn carriages that are static in the world - it would be cool if there were active pathing that was just hard coded - think the workers mechanic from Black Desert Online - where the carts are on tracks that just have these items moving from point a to b making the world feel more active and alive. The sprawling openness with only having enemy groups present makes the world feel a little static in the classic MMO fashion
Also no npcs in the chapel but guards and Ornette - this reads more like Ornette is being sealed away there and they are keeping the towns folk protected from her (this might be the point but some npcs in that chapel on the benches would make it feel more lived in)

Personal critiques for Story:

• Ellie - Ellie is a fun starter quest character but to me she reads more like those older woman characters in anime (example: Zeniba [Spirited Away]) - I think she would read better as a old lady on the hill side who is keen to the ways of the local social system having been exposure to a many of mercenaries and knowing how to capitalize on her old age to trick / fool local mercenaries into helping her with addition task. I think it would also flow better if she was tied to the Mercenary guild - like she is an ex mercenary who had some tragic end to her adventure and now continues her days on the edge of town on here own plot - this would allow for great commentary opportunities between here and your troop (feels like she does this a little bit already but reads like a parentified child with no explanation for why she is built like that)

• Johny - Johny is the leader of the troop but his character design reads more like Naruto - by that I mean he feels irrational and uncalculated. Like he wants to be the top mercenary troop but has very little experience though he is your active troop leader. To me this reads as if in Naruto instead of the team leader being Kakashi it was in fact Naruto himself. I don't really find myself feeling like Johny plays the role of a solid leader except for the later quest line. I feel like his character is meant to communicate the playful adventure who masks / hides his characteristic of the cold calculated leader (think Gojo from JJK or Jiraiya from Naruto) however this never lands because the lack of dialogue interactions that communicate any form of battle expertise or experience that influence his team leadership - the introduction quest where he throws all the explosives kinda did this but felt more like we was Jim Carriey’s character Stanley Ipkiss from the films [The Mask]. The reason I think it reads this way to me is because he places a big bet on everyone surviving the bombs basically gamboling like he knows they have plot armor because he chooses such a risk for a group of Goblins who up until this point have felt like grunts to the player so it reads more like - you were willing to blow us all up over this??? almost like Johny knows he is protected by plot armor rather than some assessment he made on the situation where he knew the damage would be minimal
  (I might be digging too deep into this but I feel like I could like Johny more).

• I feel like [Lute] is much more naive then his back story seems to indicate - you mean to tell me some random guy shows up and designates [Lute] in his mercenary troop and [Lute] doesn't say stranger danger and or doesn't have his own objectives. Like does [Lute] want to be a mercenary? If not then why was he so willing to tag along especially when it appears like the job doesn't even pay his living expenses. It feels like some one showed up and said your my subordinate now and [Lute] was like “that's cool with me”.